Old Yeller Style
by iliketocolor
Summary: Set in the beginning of Season 8. Cas isn't back yet, but Dean is, and Sam can't stand that he'd left his brother to rot in Purgatory while he got a girlfriend and a dog, trying to live a normal life. After Dean finds Sam with his own gun to his head, the boys have a heart-to-heart. Trigger warning: suicidal thoughts. No slash.


For some reason, Sam Winchester liked the idea of dying in a motel room. His life had been so dramatic, abnormal, and exhausting that killing himself in a run of the mill motel room seemed mundane and perfect; a normal ending to life, not some grand death in a battle to save the lives of everyone on the planet.

The tall, shaggy haired Winchester sat on the bed with his favorite gun, just turning it over and over again in his hands. It was his favorite handgun; Dean had gotten it for him for his first birthday after Jess's death. It always shot straight and the weight of the metal was perfect for Sam.

Tears began to fall from his eyes as he thought about Dean. He'd disappointed his older brother so much… all their lives really, but this past year would probably one of the biggest betrayals, aside from Ruby, that Sam had committed. He left his big brother to suffer in Purgatory with all the monsters they'd ever killed. He left Kevin, still just a kid, to suffer at the hands of Crowly. Sam didn't deserve the past year he'd had with Amelia and he hated himself for hurting her too.

He clicked the safety off and put the gun to his forehead, knowing Dean would probably be back from the bar in about an hour if he hadn't found a woman to sleep with. If he did find a woman, he'd most likely be gone all night.

His hands were shaking slightly but his trigger finger was steady, a childhood of training made his gun handling flawless. He was caught up in a final prayer to an absent God when he heard the motel door open and saw his brother standing in the doorway.

As soon as Dean opened the door, Sam's face dropped and he lowered the gun from his head and stood up from the bed.

"Sammy…?" Dean asked cautiously as he closed the door and walked slowly to his brother. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing Dean…" Sam stalled, not wanting to create a chick-flick moment. "Uh… just cleaning my gun."

"Pretty sure covering it in blood and brains is the opposite of cleaning," Dean countered. "Just give me the gun and tell me what's going on." His eyes fixed on the movements of the gun and of his brother.

Sam gave a forced laugh and then wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. "It's fine Dean, not doing anything now… obviously." He wandered around the bed absent mindedly, not realizing he walked around, just to end up back exactly where he had been standing.

Dean took a couple more steps towards his brother and spoke with a firm, but gentle voice. "Sam… Just sit down, tell me what's going on in your head."

"I'm just… tired, Dean." Sam confessed, finally sitting back down on the bed.

Dean stared at his little brother in disbelief, but Sam continued. "I'm sick of living like this."

"And you think I'm not?" Dean suggested, not letting his fear and anger show. "You think I haven't been to this exact point? Sammy… I almost checked out a couple dozen times since we were kids."

Sam set the safety on the gun, but kept it in his hands, needing the weight in his palms to keep him grounded. "But why'd you stay? How can you have been fighting these thoughts… _for decades?_ It's like…I can feel myself breaking Dean. I can feel pieces of who I used to be, falling away and every day I find myself hoping one of these monsters we keep fighting will finally kill me for good."

Dean sighed, he had never wanted Sam to feel this way. "'Cause every time… _every damn time Sammy, _I knew I couldn't leave you. The only reason I live and breathe is because I could never leave you like that… If you were gone… If you were gone, I wouldn't just live on without you Sammy. I mean, _I sold my soul _for you if you remember that. When you jumped in the cage, I only kept going because you made me promise to go back to Lisa. But every day man, every day I thought of how easy it would be. Just drive my baby into a lake, take an entire bottle of pills from the cabinet, shoot myself out back Old Yeller style," Dean gestured towards the gun still in Sam's hands. "But I'm still here, and I won't do that again. That promise is off the table. You go I go man."

"When… When was the first time?" Sam asked, both curious and trying to change subjects from himself to Dean.

"Give me the gun and we'll keep talking." Dean knew his baby brother like the back of his own hand, pushing the conversation to be about Dean wasn't going to happen without a compromise.

Sam thought about it for a minute. He wasn't going to be able to do it for now anyway, so he handed the gun over to Dean without looking at his brother's face.

"Alright, that's better. Now, I'll answer your questions, but we're going to talk about you eventually, so don't think you've won this."

Sam nodded and rubbed the back of his neck as Dean started to answer the previous question.

"16. I was 16 the first time… Dad had just healed from that werewolf attack in upstate New York and he had a bunch of pain killers left over. I kept the bottle in my jacket pocket for days, just contemplating when I would actually go through with it."

Sam's eyes widened slightly as he looked up from the ground to his older brother. "I remember that… He blamed you for letting the werewolf get away, so after he healed he left us in New York for 3 weeks while he went to find it off in New Jersey somewhere."

Dean nodded and ran his hand through his hair. "Yeah… I didn't do it 'cause I knew you'd be alone once I was gone… and you'd most likely be the one to find me. You were 12 and were so smart, but still didn't know so much. You had just started actively arguing with dad about everything. So I stuck around."

A comfortable silence fell for a moment; the only sound was the cars on the highway outside the motel.

"So, what's your story? Why am I coming back and finding you with a gun to your skull?" Dean finally asked, watching his little brother's reaction.

"I don't know… I mean, you were right, I didn't look for you. And ever since you've been back, I just hate myself for leaving you like that. Like you said, you sold your soul for me, and what did I do? I found myself a girl and a dog, leaving you in Purgatory. I'm a disappointment Dean, I always have been-"

"Listen to me Sammy. I have never been prouder of you than I have been over the past couple years. You fought off Lucifer, the fucking devil, with _your mind_. Then we shoved a shattered soul back inside you and… Cas… broke your brain and you still held it together. You've saved millions of people and you still keep going. Yeah it hurts that you didn't look for me last year, but even if you'd figured out where I'd ended up, you couldn't have gotten me out without letting all the other crap out with me. You didn't disappoint me Sammy, it's just… it's been a rough couple months trying to get used to being topside again… I'm more disappointed in myself than I could ever be with you." Dean sighed and thought of Cas, probably still fighting off everything in Purgatory and knowing Dean left him there.

"We're going to stay alive together and keep saving this damn world because there's no one else who is going to do it. We have to find Kevin and fix this. We've survived too much; we deserve to go out in glory someday, not like this… We don't need to end it like this in a rank-ass motel room in the middle of who-the-hell-cares, Kentucky."

Sam gave a slight smile and looked at Dean, knowing he, like Dean, had to survive, if only for his brother.

* * *

**So my first Supernatural fic. Full of depression and angst like all the other fics I write. Please let me know how it was, this kind of came off the top of my head this morning and I wrote it real quick. Thanks for reading. Hopefully I didn't waste your time.**


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